


This is Luke Skywalker

by Dibleopard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Character Study, For a given value of Good, Gen, Gray Jedi Luke Skywalker, I suppose, Spoilers for Chapter 16: The Rescue, That Scene in Chapter 16 of The Mandalorian, and i appreciate it, and there is value in that, but he is good all the same, but it flows best like this so shhhhh, for better or for worse, he walks the line, highlighted just how Vader Luke is, luke is a jedi, luke is not inherently good, strange mix of past and present tenses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28179456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dibleopard/pseuds/Dibleopard
Summary: Luke is Vader in his swings, Jedi in his blade.Luke is Vader in his power, Jedi in his detachment.Luke is dangerous.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	This is Luke Skywalker

**Author's Note:**

> My sister and I had a long discussion about how when she saw Luke fight in That Scene, she thought for a moment that it was Anakin. Just as violent, and with less training.  
> Some people think that it's dumb for it to parallel Vader, that it undermines Luke's character to rampage through droids like an OP storm of cool light sword go vwoom. I think that's an oversimplification. Equally it is oversimplifying to claim that this is what Luke should have been in TLJ.  
> I don't think we're meant to see the parallel as a fulfillment of any particular potential. This isn't what Master Luke, ultimate Jedi looks like. This is just shining a light on who Luke is as a person.  
> We know he is fundamentally different to Anakin, we see it throughout the OT. Now we see that he will constantly be moving against his similarities to the Sith Anakin became because he is also fundamentally the same.  
> Here he acts like Vader, so what separates them?

Luke Skywalker is a Jedi because he was always going to be a Jedi. His father had been one, his guardian, Ben Kenobi, had been one, Yoda, his strongest mentor, had been one. The path of the Jedi was one laid before his feet, one that led away from the desert and the crematorium his childhood had become and into the light of the stars he had always wanted to visit.

Luke Skywalker is the son of Anakin Skywalker. Equally he is the son of Darth Vader. This fact became part of him with his mechanical hand, there is no denying it. He can feel it in every swing of his saber, in every call to the Force, in every heartbeat.

It had been said that Anakin Skywalker’s flaw was his attachments. Luke’s was his lack of them. He loved his friends dearly, he chose to fly to their aid as Yoda demanded he finish his training on Dagobah, potentially throwing away all chance of being a true Jedi Knight. He loved his Aunt and Uncle, who had provided him the best childhood they could afford to and who kept him out of the Imperial Academy while he was to blind to see their reasoning. 

However, he was keenly aware that it hadn’t taken much for his decision on Dagobah to sway in his friends’ favours – Yoda was wise but frustrating, looking at Luke and seeing only his father, unempathetic. Perhaps Yoda had wanted the best for Luke. More likely, he wanted the best for the Jedi. Leaving him was easy, leaving Ben Kenobi’s holo-blue ghost slightly harder, leaving the straightest path to the Jedi… scarily easy. He had watched the smoke rise from his Aunt and Uncle’s skeletons and felt more release than sorrow. They were always meant to die. He was always meant to leave. Death and escape were common tales on Tatooine. That was the way of things. Was it the way of the Jedi?

Luke was not attached to people as his father was. They did not form his sense of self, nor did they anchor him. Additions, not integrated. He had already chosen to deny Palpatine over saving their lives. It had taken over a decade for Anakin Skywalker’s ties to be eroded. Luke knew, as he knew the heat of two suns, that it would take just one terrible moment for him to take his independence and run. 

He had faced terrible things before, but always with a guiding force keeping him on his way. First Ben as an attractive force, then Vader as a repulsive one, then Yoda, then the Emperor. Now all were dead. He had to be his own compass and he feared that, as time blurred his memories of them, it would skew imperceptibly but irreversibly. It would just take the wrong push or pull of a magnet, and he would step off his path.

Luke walked in the Light because he did. He moved forwards and there, there shone Light. He had wanted to become a Jedi because his father had been a Jedi. Now he wanted to be a Jedi because that’s what he was. Simultaneously the purest and weakest of motivations – elemental metal, cut easily by an alloy blade. If there ever came a motivation – a real one, not the self-destructive kind that Palpatine had tried to offer, tinged repulsive by his deeds, by Vader’s short-circuiting metal hand – he knew his wayward soul would cling to it and allow it to tear him through the galaxy, a brutal, superluminal comet with a tail of plasma extinction.

Luke was dangerous.

It is a miracle, therefore, that he never fell. Perhaps it made him the best Jedi of all. Perhaps it just made the galaxy lucky.  


**Author's Note:**

> What separates Luke from Vader?  
> Luck. And perhaps self-awareness.  
> Luke has seen what his father became. After the years of his prime, he has enough wisdom to be able to turn away from temptation when he sees his life burn down at the hands of his nephew. He could so easily have become dark.  
> But was it really wisdom? Or did he now have another tangible force to repel him from the darkness?  
> People get caught up in the legend of what Luke should be, in all the things that he, as the Last Jedi, should stand for. He is only some of those things. Because he is human.  
> Luke Skywalker as human, Luke Skywalker as Light because he rejects the Dark, Luke Skywalker as great not because he rejected the Dark on the Death Star, but because it was always nipping at his heels and it takes some might to withstand that sort of chronic pressure.  
> He's always on the edge, no matter how many times he is forced to make a decision of sides. That's what makes him Luke Skywalker.


End file.
